Rocky Mountain Widow (Historical) (7 page)

With a wink, Adelaide cracked a smile, belying the severity of her words. “He's grown on me, what can I say? He looks too much like his grandfather, my dear husband. Here's a spot of tea. Can you hold the cup?”

“Yes.” Claire's hand trembled when she tried to lift it.

“Never you mind. Let me take care of you. I've had the same sadness, my dear. Wasn't able to carry four babies. Then I had Joshua's father. So it doesn't mean you'll be childless for sure.” The older woman's brusque tone softened as she stirred a generous dollop of honey into the tea with great effort before holding the cup to Claire's lips.

Four miscarriages?
She couldn't imagine, but she saw the weight of it on Adelaide's wreathed face, the
sorrow that remained after decades. Claire managed to swallow the sweet tea that ran across her dry, swollen-feeling tongue before collapsing back into the pillows.

“You did nothing wrong.” There was a clink of the ironware cup into its saucer and the brush of Adelaide's surprisingly gentle hand on Claire's brow. “A doctor told me once that whether a new life takes firm root or not, it is out of our hands. Sleep, dear girl, and put your conscience to rest. One day there will be a next time. Another baby to wish on.”

Scalding tears burned in her throat, keeping her from answering. Claire forced her tight muscles to relax. Let the sorrow lift upward and out of her. She held on to Adelaide's unprecedented kindness with both hands.

The older woman was wrong, there would be no more babies, no more wishes. The only comfort Claire could take from that knowledge was that she would never again have a husband, a man in her life to drain the joy out of it.

Comforted by that thought, and that thought alone, she sank downward, welcoming the numbing darkness of sleep's warm embrace.

W
hen Joshua had thought the day couldn't get much worse, he'd been wrong. With Claire Hamilton's razor-sharp words embedded deep, he headed out into the bitter cold, taking advantage of the break between one storm and the next one gathering swiftly on the northwest horizon.

Not even the frigid temperatures could numb the widow's remarks, which stuck with him like a handful of needle burrs. She'd accused him of helping her for some ulterior motive.

Did she really think he was after more livestock to take care of? More land to tend and protect? No, he had more than enough to keep him busy. The last thing he needed was to try to pressure a new widow out of her rightful property or to be unjustly accused of being that kind of low-down scoundrel.

Well, the pretty little widow could insult him all she wanted. That didn't change his obligations—self-im
posed obligations, it was true, but if he didn't make sure she was protected, who would?

Troubled, Joshua turned away from the fading rays of sundown and circled around back of the stable. Haystacks with their rounded tops crowded together, on the east side of the barn and not the northwest, which would have better insulated the animals from the harsh winds.

Ham sure wasn't much of a rancher. As far as Joshua could tell, his work was halfhearted at best. There was a visible hole in the barn roof, not more than a few bushels of grain—barely enough to get through the rest of the month. And not an animal in sight. He hadn't even bothered to bring in the stock for the winter. Ham probably figured he would leave the animals to graze as long as snowdrifts weren't burying the cattle alive. Less work to do, but tougher on the livestock, and the risk of loss was pretty great.

Not that he expected Ham to have been a model cattleman. Not if the slaughtered bodies of sheep, which he'd been responsible for, was an indication. No, Joshua thought Ham was about as low a varmint as they came, but here he was, probably standing on the spot where the man had died. Where he'd been shot point-blank.

I should have stayed longer that night.
Joshua rubbed the back of his neck, where his scarf had grown itchy. It wasn't the first time he'd thought that. It wasn't the first time guilt had hung heavy about his neck. He'd thought Claire a victim in all this, and her harshness toward him a few moments ago didn't erase the fact that she'd lived a sad life. She didn't need to say a single word for him to know the truth.

The cabin where she and Ham had lived, the home she'd made with her husband, the house she kept, had not one feminine article in it. Nothing that obviously belonged to a woman. No tatted lace doilies sat on the tabletop. No crocheted afghan was thrown over the back of the sofa. And no scraps of ribbon or delicate porcelain knickknacks picked up dust on shelves.

It was as if a woman didn't live there at all. What kind of life was that?

“Hey, big brother.” It was Jordan lumbering out from the back barn door, batting hay off his coat, as if he'd been lying down on the job. “I got the horses ready for the night. General got up to eat. That's a good sign, eh?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Whatever his faults, Jordan had a special way with the horses. “I appreciate that you sacrificed a long nap to help out.”

“Hey, I do what I can. As long as I don't break a sweat.” Thinking himself so funny, Jordan winked. “Do you want me to stay here for the night? You'd have another gun in case the Hamiltons come callin'.”

Joshua tried to imagine how Jordan would act in a gunfight. How did he tell his youngest brother, who thought himself so fine and manly at nineteen, that their grandmother would be all the gun power Joshua would need at his side? If Jordan knew that, it would take some of the crow out of the rooster. As much as he wanted Jordan to grow up, Joshua knew how frail a man's self-opinion was at that age.

“What I need is to have someone keep watch back home in case the Hamiltons bring any trouble there.” Joshua didn't think the brothers would be foolish
enough to show up at his family's house, not when two more of the Gable brothers still lived there. They were a bunch of bachelors who knew how to use a gun and to defend what was theirs. “If you head out now, you'll beat the storm home.”

“What do you want me to tell Ma?”

“That I'm staying to protect Granny.”

“Right. She's the best shot in the entire county.” Jordan rolled his eyes, pulled his hat down closer to his head as the wind gusted and brought tiny snowflakes. They shifted through the air like powdered sugar. “Need me to bring anything back come morning?”

“Yeah. Stop by the mercantile and have Shannon charge up some groceries for Mrs. Hamilton, here. And bill it to me.”

“To you?” Jordan's brow shot up an inch. “But why? You're not a neighbor. We live on the other side of the county.”

“I lease the public grazing lands not far from here. You know that. That makes us neighbors enough. Besides, Granny is the best one to be helping Claire out when she's so infirm. Do you want to leave Granny out here with few staples and angry Hamiltons threatening to strike?”

“Okay, okay!” Jordan held up his mittened hands as if he were a guilty man caught shoplifting. “Golly, you don't have to get all het up about it. I'll drop by sometime in the mornin', if it's not blizzarding.”

“Make it early. It's about time you got your lazy ass up before nine o'clock.”

Jordan seemed unaffected by the insult, just as Joshua
knew he would be. Jordan took life easy, one day at a time, without a worry about what tomorrow would bring.

Must be nice, he thought, heading toward the back of the cabin. There had been some split wood, scrap wood mostly, stacked in the lean-to. Surely there had to be a seasoned pile split and stacked somewhere. Or a supply of coal laid in for the long winter. But there was only a covered coal bin mostly empty of coal. Enough to see them through a three-day blizzard, no more.

Figures. Joshua added coal to the mental list in his head. One thing was for sure—Claire Hamilton wasn't likely to be making a weekly trip into town for supplies, not for a long while. The doc said she wasn't out of danger yet. And remembering how pale the woman had been—more of an ashen gray—and how she'd struggled to lift her head from the pillow, he knew she was lucky to be alive at all.

Fate had put her into his path more than once. He should have stayed that night to make sure she was good and safe although she had needed the doctor. Then she wouldn't have had to shoot her husband in self-defense and pay the price for that action.

The plod of horses on hard-packed snow echoed in the hush. It must be Jordan on his way out, he thought as he hopped up the back steps. When he heard the rattle of harnesses and the distinctive squeak squee-eak of a buggy wheel, he scrubbed his hand over his face and hoped he was imagining the sound. It couldn't be his sister. What would she be doing way out here? She didn't know Claire Hamilton, did she?

He peered around the side of the cabin and sure
enough, there she was, Betsy, his only sister, in the seat of her little buggy, guiding her gelding up to the Hamiltons' front door. The boot of the buggy was overflowing from the bags of laundry she'd picked up, presumably on her route, and she drew the horse to a halt and set the brake, unaware that he was watching her.

His little sister. He'd protected and looked after her all his life, and he thought he knew her better than anyone else. They were the closest in age among their siblings. They were the oldest and so when their father died, she had pitched in to help, too. To keep the family together and their father's land and legacy intact.

And now she'd turned into an independent woman living in town with her own laundry business and her upcoming wedding to plan. It was the wedding that stuck in his craw like a foul worm. No man on this earth was good enough for his Betsy. He was the first to admit his feelings on the subject, but she'd chosen an inappropriate man. An ex-convict and an outcast. How could someone like that ever be close to being good enough for her?

Hold your tongue and your temper, man.
He could feel his anger rising, and it was enough to melt the airy snowflakes sifting weightlessly in the air. Enough to send the blizzard speeding in the other direction.

He had problems, all right, and they weren't only with the land, the livestock and taking care of the family. Keeping his sister out of trouble was an impossible job, one he'd failed at so far.

“Joshua! Is that you spying on me on the other side of the door?” Betsy breezed toward him, despite her
thick layers of wool coverings. Her eyes were as bright as sapphires and her cheeks were rosy and, he feared, not only from the cold. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Ham's funeral was today. Granny and I are assisting the widow.”

“There's trouble?” Genuine distress chased the brightness from her features. “Mrs. Hamilton is such a nice lady. Has grief disabled her?”

“If you'd attended the funeral, you would know.”

“I had my delivery route.” She shrugged one slim shoulder easily, as if it couldn't be helped. As if a woman in his family had to work!

It grated on him, that was for sure, but he bit back his opinion on that. They'd already argued over it enough. “Hamilton's brothers seem to think he was murdered.”

“I thought he fell from a horse, or something like that.”

Joshua decided not to mention the bullet hole he'd put in Ham's shoulder, since the doc hadn't mentioned it and he'd been the one reporting to the sheriff on the body. “The Hamiltons aren't the most logical of folks. What are you doing here?”

“Mrs. Hamilton hired me to do her laundry, because of her condition. Do you think it would be imposing to disturb her at a time like this? I already separated out her husband's things, so she wouldn't find them when she went to put her clothing away.”

That was his sister, thoughtful and sweet. How had she wound up engaged to the wrong sort of man? She claimed it was true love, but he didn't buy it. He feared she was throwing her life away, to wind up as sad and
miserable as Claire Hamilton was. Except for one small difference—no man would dare raise a hand to his little sister. Not while he drew breath. “Granny's in with her.”

Betsy's eyes widened. Her mouth drew into an
O
. That could only mean one thing. They both knew it. Granny looked after those who needed it from time to time. She had a way with herbs and a healing touch, for all her outlandish behavior. She liked to say she could shoot you and patch you up and cook you a hearty supper, all in the space of an hour.

“This is no time to be bothering Mrs. Hamilton. I hate to see this happen to any woman, but she's all alone except for an aunt or something. She would have sure wanted a child.” Betsy ambled right up to him, unaware that his earlier anger still boiled beneath the surface, and laid her hand on his arm. “I'm glad you're here, helping out. She's such a kind lady.”

“Some might say so, but I've seen her real side.” The side he was convinced was the true nature of woman. It disappointed him, he realized, that Claire was no different from other women. Not even from his own dear sister. The more she wanted something, the more ruthless and blind she became to all else. “I'll take her clothes in. You hurry home before the storm breaks.”

“I don't want to disturb Mrs. Hamilton. If you'll set the laundry to be done out on the back porch, I'll come by and fetch it. Or, you can bring it into town with you.”

“You're determined to turn me into an accomplice. I don't approve of your business. I'm not going to start making deliveries for you.”

“Then do it for Mrs. Hamilton. Since you've seen the real her, then you know she's the nicest person. I hate to say it, but her husband's death may be a blessing in disguise for her.”

“You wouldn't be the first to think so.”

“I'll get her things. It's really starting to snow.”

As Betsy hurried away, snow danced around her, tiny dry flakes that spoke of a long snowfall to come. And he'd be stuck here, standing guard, making sure the woman inside the modest plank-and-board cabin remained safe.

Whether she wanted him to or not. Whether she believed he had an ulterior motive or not.

Betsy left the clean clothes, gave him a quick hug and hurried away. She had a long way to go before reaching town. He tried not to think of where she might have been, visiting her fiancé who lived alone in those mountains, now lost in the storm's veil.

Hours later, after he'd fed the fire in the front room and gratefully gulped down a huge bowl of his grandmother's Irish stew, he had plenty of time alone with no woman to trouble him. Just the long cold night, where a full white moon peeked between the traveling wisps of torn clouds and brushed silver on the sleeping prairie. No danger could lurk unseen on this night.

With his Winchester at his side, he watched and he waited. Trouble was coming. He could sense it like the flakes on the wind. He'd be ready.

 

She woke to the final chime of the mantel clock. Not knowing which hour it was—perhaps midnight? Or
one?—she sensed it was not the quiet musical ring of the clock that had awoken her.

The fire glowed, burned down to heavy chunks of gleaming coals snapping in the grate, and cast a menacing dark orange shine upon the hearthstones.

A snoring sound came from the wing chair, which stood alongside the hearth where the shadows seemed darkest. Claire tried to remember if the doc had left. She remembered overhearing him say he couldn't stay. Joshua Gable had stormed out the door. She clearly remembered that.

Then whose leather boots were those on the ottoman pulled before the chair? The size of the man's riding boots was small—certainly not Joshua Gable's. And she doubted that either of Ham's brothers, who surely had bigger feet than that, would have broken in to fall placidly asleep in the chair.